Episode 1 Tales from the Wild Wood

Britain was once an island of trees.

For 10,000 years they have shaped our landscapes.

And we were once a woodland people.

We managed our forests carefully, cutting and coppicing,

and they thrived under our care.

But forestry has changed.

In the last century plantations have replaced many of our woods.

Others have been deemed unprofitable and abandoned.

Can they survive in the 21st century?

Writer and woodsman Rob Penn believes so.

Here we go.

For the next year he is taking over part of Strawberry Cottage Wood,

50 acres of unmanaged woodland in South Wales.

Oh, my God, I feel like I'm going into a jungle!

Can he bring this forgotten forest back to life again?

To be successful, Rob will work through the four seasons.

Bitter! Bitterly cold!

He must bring the wood back to good health.

Look at that! They're magnificent creatures, aren't they?

And he needs it to produce an income.

Strawberry Wood charcoal!

Can he use the ancient skills of the woodsman

to find a modern role for our forests?

It is one of the most efficient fuels in the world.

It is a surprising fact

that we are one of the least wooded countries in Europe.

Forests cover only 13% of Britain.

Yet they are an iconic feature of our landscape.

And in a few pockets of the country, they still shape the way we live.

Nine years ago, Rob Penn moved with his family

from the centre of London to the Black Mountains in South-East Wales.

Local history is written in the woodlands here.

It was once the centre of a thriving charcoal industry.

Like many people moving from the city, Rob was drawn by the forests

and two years ago started helping out in a nearby wood,

clearing old trees in return for firewood and kindling.

Someone once asked me why I spend so much time in the woods

and the answer I gave was because it's my Prozac.

I feel a great sense of relief and calm coming to the woods.

I make a living as a writer

and writers get this thing called writer's block

and there's only so much time you can spend sitting,

staring at a blank page before you really need to get up

and go and do something else

and my first port of call is here - the woods.

Under the green canopy,

Rob has slowly been learning the ways of the woodsman.

Pile of brushwood, I'm going to leave that as habitat for wildlife.

Down here we've got some sticks, poles for making hurdles,

pea sticks for the garden, a log there,

that'll be turned into fire wood to keep somebody's house warm,

and here we've got the coppiced hazel which will be used to make charcoal.

All of these things are the natural resources that provided

the backbone of rural industries,

industries that sustained communities,

not just in this area, but across Britain for centuries.

But what Rob is doing is in decline.

Over half a million acres of our forest now lie abandoned.

Is there still a place for woodsmen in modern Britain?

I've been working in the woods for a couple of years

in a very amateurish way but all that time

I've been wondering if I took this more seriously

could I achieve something that had lasting consequences?

Could I find a role for British woodlands in modern society?

And this is not a nostalgic project.

This is about looking at how the woodlands

fit in to contemporary Britain.

Today is a very exciting day, it's the first day of my woodland management project

and I'm on my way up to Joe's farm, and hopefully he is going to show me

round the piece of wood that I'm going to take over.

-Morning, Joe.

-Hiya, Rob, good to see you.

-Good to see you, how you doing?

-Yeah, not so bad.

Joe Binns is a neighbour and old friend of Rob's.

Ranging up the hill behind his farm is Strawberry Cottage Wood,

50 acres of mixed broadleaf trees

where nobody has worked for over half a century.

I think this is pretty well where your wood starts, here.

Rob, there's lots of fairly ancient hazel, like this one here

that's sort of leaning and about to fall over.

You can see how the canopy... There's so little light getting in here.

The only thing that's surviving really are these rather exotic-looking ferns.

Yeah.

Joe and Rob have come to an agreement -

for the next year, Rob will take over the running of this wood.

Rob needs to make Strawberry Cottage Wood productive again.

He must attract back flora and fauna that once existed here

and harvest timber and fuel from the trees.

Oh, my God! I feel like I'm going into a jungle! I'm just in Wales!

What the hell is going on?

Oh, for God's sake. HE LAUGHS

This is... We need a chain saw in here. Oh, my God!

What has happened in Strawberry Cottage Wood is all too common.

It is very difficult to make money from small woods,

and many landowners have simply left them to grow wild.

Nowadays, there's no financial incentive to clear woodland like this.

It costs too much to employ people to work with a chain saw all day.

You're not going to get £100 worth of fire wood for a day's work.

The oak trees would be worth a bit but there's no way you'd ever

get the timber out of here because it's too steep.

In the last 200 years,

coal and oil have replaced wood as our main source of fuel.

Steel and plastic have taken over our factories and homes.

And the British Empire once provided an endless supply

of other nations' timber.

If Rob is to make Strawberry Cottage Wood work,

he needs to find modern markets for our woodland products.

There's a sense of enchantment here,

which is something very lovely to explore.

It genuinely looks untouched.

But a very exciting thing for me is that I'm going to spend a lot of time here

and it will be hard work and it will be exhausting,

and at times it will be maddening, probably,

but there will always be the calm,

the simple pleasure of spending a day in the woods,

and that's something I look forward to enormously.

If Rob is to be successful he needs guidance.

Strawberry Cottage Wood is filled with standing dead trees that could fall at any moment.

Ah, Wyndham!

To help him tackle them, Rob has recruited his neighbour

Wyndham Morgan, a man who has spent over half a century in the woods.

Well, you want an axe, but the most important tool you want is a chain saw.

-Very good. Have you got one?

-In the barn, aye.

-Shall we have a look?

-OK.

-Brilliant.

Wyndham is a legend in the area,

a vast library of knowledge and experience.

Beware because there is an old saying in the wood -

nobody gets hurt with a big tree, it's always the little ones.

-Is that right?

-Mmm, because you take great care with a big tree.

Of course, yeah.

Beware. Always wear your safety helmet.

-Yeah.

-I have been hit on the head.

-Have you?

And all I was left with was the ring around my head,

and I never even had a headache.

-How about that?

-Is that right?

-So they do work.

-They do work.

But the plastic helmet was...

-Smashed to pieces.

-..smashed all over the place.

-Wow!

-So they do work.

-There's loads and loads of woods now need managing...

-Yeah.

-The woodland hasn't been managed.

-No.

And it would be nice to see the woodland managed again.

-I'm glad you're going to have a go at it.

-Great.

-Very pleased.

-Great.

But, yeah, take care, that's all I can say.

-It's not as easy as you think.

-I'm sure it's not.

And you'll come and give me a hand at some points?

-Yeah, I'll come and give you a hand.

-Brilliant, brilliant.

I'll carry the cider!

THEY LAUGH

With Wyndham on board,

Rob's first task is to tackle an old birch leaning dangerously

over the path onto a hazel tree beneath it.

Well, it's only hanging on by a thread.

How much is supported by that up there, I don't really know.

Will this come down when we're taking the coppice down?

There's a possibility.

Oh, good-oh, OK.

You'll just have to watch yourself because there's no other way.

He's off! He's not hanging around!

You'll learn on the job, that's basically how I feel.

And I hope we don't lose Wyndham, or indeed me,

on the first real day of action in the woods.

There's a very lovely quote -

"first the tool, then the book."

You learn the skills of a woodsman through your own sweat

and that's, I think, probably a very wholesome approach to the project.

You could immerse yourself in a library and read books for months

but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to swing an axe at it.

-There's only one way he's going to go and that's straight down.

-Yeah.

-So if you're on that side of him...

-You'll be out the way.

-..you'll be out of the way.

-Yeah.

Just put a very fine sink in there, just take a "V" piece out.

-Yeah.

-Make sure they meet completely.

-Yep, nicely, OK.

-Don't undercut it.

-OK.

-As soon as he starts to go I suggest you pull your saw out and stand back.

-Yeah.

And if you can't get your saw out, leave your saw, stand back.

Go on, knock him out.

There we are, couldn't have been better.

Thanks, Wyndham. There we go.

The tree made safe.

So this is the end of day one, proper day one, in the woods

and you know, at the most basic level

we seems to have made a big impact, which is great.

You know, that big birch which was hanging there,

you know, a big storm could've put that down on top of somebody working in the woods, namely me.

And so the fact that that's down, that's very good.

For the next two weeks, Wyndham and Rob clear the dead trees and make the woodland safe.

People have worked this way for thousands of years

and our oldest trees have been shaped by generations of woodsmen.

To explore how we've managed them, Rob is heading east,

to one of Britain's largest and grandest forests.

There have been trees in the Forest of Dean for over 8,000 years.

Since Roman times it has also been home to generations of woodsmen and miners.

A small community still remains - men like Peter Ralph

and David Harvey.

# There are trees all around us

# This forest is the only place for me

# So if you ever come to this here part of England

# The forest 'twixt the Severn and the Wye... #

Foresters we call ourselves, I'm a forester born and bred.

Born and bred that is, and I think we've got our own dialect and

our own way of, sort of, living that is typical to the Forest of Dean.

In the 1920s

there were over 20,000 people working in the Forest of Dean.

Miners, woodsmen and farmers

harvested timber for fuel and construction.

The way they managed the wood was vital not just for their own jobs,

but for the survival of their communities.

When I walk into a wood like this

I instinctively think that it's a completely natural environment.

And you'll be completely mistaken because it is a managed forest.

Every tree in the forest, barring the odd weed trees like birch,

have been planted at one time or another.

Just after the Civil War there were only 200 mature trees

standing in the whole forest.

-In the WHOLE forest?

-Yes. It's 27,000 acres of forest now

but there was only 200 mature trees.

The rest of the forest was all coppice and coppicing means

you fell the tree, let the shoots come up from the stump,

and the oaks here were planted in round about 1800-ish, mainly because

Nelson wasn't very happy with the way the forest was being run at that time.

And between 1808 and 1815 11,000 acres of forest was cleared,

planted with 13 million acorns, and that's how all this started.

It's an intriguing thing because not knowing much about it,

you come somewhere like this and you presume

that this is what it might have looked like 1,000 years ago.

But of course that's not the case at all.

-It's changed significantly over that time.

-Out of all recognition.

-It would've been more like a wild wood 1,000 years ago.

-Yeah.

But now it looks a bit like a wild wood, but it's not.

-It's not. It's managed by man.

-Yes.

-Yeah, yeah.

Every piece of wood has been managed by man

and only very recently have we come to imagine

the woodlands as wilderness.

They're not.

You know, some of them do look like wilderness

but they're really not.

They are managed parts of the landscape,

just as every part of the landscape is managed.

And in the course of managing our woods for thousands of years,

they have, in a sense, become dependent upon us.

And if you turn your back on that relationship,

then that is to the detriment of the wood.

If Rob is going to be a force for good in Strawberry Cottage Wood,

then he must learn how the woodland works.

More hazel.

Bit of elder up there, young oak.

These are structures made by a parasitic wasp.

Tiny little wasps called ichumon wasps or ichneumon wasps.

I'm not sure which.

Gareth Ellis is the biodiversity expert

for the Brecon Beacons National Park.

Rob has invited him over to evaluate the ecosystem within the wood.

I guess the first question that I need answered is, is this wood healthy?

Yeah, I mean, you have to really understand

the basics of woodland ecology, which aren't too complicated.

-That's good.

-It really starts underneath our feet,

-down in the soil.

-Yeah.

An undisturbed soil which is full of things like bacteria

and particularly fungi.

It's fungi in the soil that recycle the nutrients from all the dead wood, the dead leaves

-that come down.

-Yeah.

-They break that down

-and allow the next generation of trees to bring them up from the soil.

-OK, great.

So above that ground layer, we have what we would call a field layer,

which is perhaps sort of your knees to your waist - it's the bracken, it's the bramble.

-Yeah.

-And above that you've got an understorey,

which is either your small trees and all these coppiced trees.

-Yeah.

-And then above that you have the main canopy, the full-sized

or fully grown trees, which are forming the big canopy above us.

So you have these stages, these levels,

and a lot of woodland management is about manipulating those levels

and particularly manipulating the light that comes in.

Rob must bring light back onto the woodland floor,

if the young trees are to grow straight and tall.

OK, Rob, here's a great example of how the trees are reacting

to the amount of light they receive.

-Yeah.

-Look at this ash tree.

-Oh, my God.

-Look at the shape of it.

-Look at that. So what's happened there?

Well, this tree, if we actually look behind us

-you've got a huge piece of hazel coppice here.

-Wow!

This is taking up all the light.

This little tree germinated down here

and then found that the light wasn't coming in above it.

The light was coming in over there.

So this tree has been drawn towards the light

-and you can see it's grown out...

-It's extraordinary.

..it's gone in-between the hazel here and that ash tree.

So it would good for an S-shaped bench and that would be about it.

This is an example, perhaps,

of how the trees grow as a reaction to their light.

The management is often about just controlling that light level.

Where light has fallen, new life has emerged, covering the forest floor.

Seeds could still be down under here just waiting for a little

bit of warmth and a little bit of light which they're not going

-to get underneath this thick blanket...

-Yeah.

..of not only fresh bracken, but last year's dead bracken as well.

-Dead bracken as well.

-Yeah. You can see last year's growth and then previous years...

-Does it go all the way down?

-There we go. Now we're down to the soil.

Look at that, there's not a thing growing.

If you clear this, what you want to be able to do

is give a chance for either trees to germinate naturally

-or you could try and help them along by maybe planting in here.

-Yeah.

But the first thing to do would be to get on top of this bracken.

This ground should be full of things like birch seed and ash

and maybe some oak in here as well.

By managing this wood, Rob can encourage

the return of original species.

But he also needs to create a working woodland,

whereby timber and forest products

can pay for the costs of conservation.

There's a lot of good timber in there, you know,

it's got a nice straight growth here.

It's had the opportunity to grow straight up for light without

-being affected by too many things around it.

-Yeah.

This is a tree that you could potentially take out.

It's got other trees around it.

The removal of this won't affect the integrity of the woodland.

Are you happy to take this sort of tree out?

I'd be terrified, actually, to be perfectly honest.

I mean... Oh, my God. I wouldn't even know where to begin.

It would be an exciting day.

-Once this tree is down to a stump, this tree will grow again.

-Yes.

This tree will coppice, so this stump will be part of your coppice,

so maybe you might be back to the same tree in 15, 20 years and taking

off three or four stems which have come back as the coppice growth.

When you manage a wood, you have to think in terms of centuries

not years or seasons, and that is difficult for us.

Modern life changes very quickly, technology plays an incredibly

important part in that and we've come to see change,

immediate change, as the norm.

When you're managing a wood, you have to slow that down massively

because generations pass whilst one tree grows.

Taking on this project could immerse Rob in the wood for decades.

Trees grow very slowly,

and so he needs to plan his work not just for this year,

but for future generations.

Spending time with Gareth was interesting because one of the important things that came out of it

was the need for a plan.

You know, woodland is... It looks old, it looks rugged,

it looks like it could withstand anything that man could throw at it

but, of course, that's not the case. It is actually quite sensitive.

So that's why we're here, that's what we're going to try and do - get a good plan together.

Back at the times of the great monastic houses, in the 14th century,

the first people to really constructively and sustainably manage wood on these islands,

you know, they drew maps.

The map would show which bit of the wood would be under coppice, under what rotation cycle.

As I said, it's a start point for a management plan

and that is what we will use to go forward

and I think better to have a plan than to just go in whirling with a chain saw.

There are over 150 hazel trees in the top third of the wood.

These trees can be cut for charcoal and firewood,

allowing light back onto the forest floor.

At the bottom there are 70 large ash and oak trees.

Taller trees can be felled for timber

and so give younger stems more sunlight.

In the middle, there is a vast swathe of bracken and brambles.

This is where seedlings can regenerate

and Rob can plant new saplings.

But only after it has been cleared.

In the last ten days autumn has undisputedly arrived.

The bracken has browned and it's gone over, the leaves have

turned on the trees, in fact a lot of them have already fallen.

What I'm looking at here is an area

which was probably clear-felled 50 years ago, Joe's not exactly sure.

The way we're going to turn this over

and get rid of the bracken and brambles

is we're going to introduce pigs.

To remove bracken and brambles involves destroying their root system.

Pigs are masters at turning over the soil to dig them out.

As far back as medieval times,

the value of a wood was measured by the number of pigs kept within it.

To be honest, I know nothing about pigs.

I've never known a pig in my life,

but I have been told

that you need to provide

a minimum amount of comfort to keep a pig happy,

and that's why I'm building a pigpen.

I've never tried to think like a pig, but if I did now, I'd say

that's probably not a bad spot for a pig. I think I'd be quite happy.

Joe and Rob are hoping to collect Tamworth pigs from a local breeder called Ray Harris.

Despite years of country living,

Rob has never encountered a live Tamworth before.

That's a pig? Is that a pig or is it a horse?

ROB LAUGHS

Jesus, that's a big pig.

Ray, lovely to meet you at last.

-Well, what do you think?

-It's a big pig, isn't it?

It is, but wait till you see the boar.

-The boar's in here?

-Yeah, he's in there.

-OK.

And I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing

but she's just coming into season,

so she is waiting for the boar and the boar is waiting for her.

-Excellent!

-So...

-How can that be a good thing?

They're normally very well behaved but today he can sense her...

-Right.

-..she can sense him, and I think they're waiting.

-To be together.

-They are.

Can we go in?

Yeah, certainly, we can go in but just be careful of your feet.

What you've got to be careful about is when you have the boar in there

that he can get quite jealous of you coming up to the sow.

-Are you serious?

-No, no, he could do.

I have had a boar who actually just comes up and gives you a little nudge.

Well, they've got tusks and the tusk went into the muscle there.

Didn't break the skin or anything

cos it was just a friendly little, you know,

"you keep away, she's mine,"

not that I'm into that sort of thing anyway.

So the sow being in season was not in the script.

So we've got a randy boar who's very anxious to get together with the sow

and we've now got to try and load the pair of them into a trailer.

Erm, what could possibly go right?

-You've got to be patient.

-You've got to be patient, yeah.

Yeah, don't get behind them...

-No.

-..try to force them on.

-Yeah.

-..or anything like that.

-Let a pig take its time.

-Yeah.

SOW RESISTS

So we've got the sow.

Jacqueline is loaded into our trailer, which is good news.

We're now going to try and get the boar in there with her,

which is the bit where we can either lose both of them

or we could end up with both in the same trailer.

Goldenball and Jacqueline each weigh over 300kg

and can do serious damage to both Rob and the vehicles.

Open the gate.

Yeah, I got you. Oh, my goodness me.

Here he comes.

Oh, I say! That's good stuff, yeah.

OK, gates closed.

With the pigs loaded they return to Joe's farm,

where they still have 30 acres of planted woodland to cross.

I've never done this with a boar

and a sow that's in season at the same time.

So, yeah, exactly.

So I'm learning on this one as well.

Come on.

Come on, come on.

-And we start walking.

-OK, brilliant.

-Yeah.

-Come on, come on, come on.

Come on. Come on, big guy.

It's going. They're coming.

Look at them - magnificent creatures, aren't they?

And so far the pigs are being wholly obedient.

Come on.

Up that way, up your way.

Come on, come on.

That's it, good girl.

We're about to go live.

Piece of grass to test whether or not this is actually working.

Ow! It's working.

But as the pigs climb the hill, they are confronted by the fence.

Oh, I don't like that.

PIG GRUNTS AND SQUEALS

-So it's not a very good path going up that side.

-No.

It's OK, she's coming down over there.

Just put the electric fence on, did you?

They've hit the electric fence

and what they've actually done is they've lifted this rod out of the ground,

and the one's actually gone through.

The one stayed in and the other's gone through.

Jacqueline the sow has broken out of the pen.

Whilst Ray goes off to find her, Rob must keep Goldenball

the boar in one place to prevent both pigs escaping.

I'm not quite sure where the boar is but we're going to try

and find him in the dense undergrowth somehow.

FOOD RATTLES He likes a bit of the sound of that.

And then we're going to entertain him with my best gags.

Oh, my God, here we go.

Come on, come on!

It takes three hours of searching and herding

before the two Tamworths are reunited.

Come on, big fella, up you come!

They're coming up, just keep clear now, keep way out of the way.

With the pigs safely installed and the dead trees made safe,

Rob's life in the woods is under way.

-Gentlemen, good job.

-Well, that was teamwork, wasn't it?

That's what it all boils down to, teamwork.

I'm not sure I played a particularly fundamental role,

but I admire the work you did then. THEY LAUGH

But autumn is drawing to a close, and winter -

a woodsman's busiest season - is fast approaching.

As the leaves begin to fall,

Rob needs to prepare himself for the heavy work in the forest.

Next time at Strawberry Cottage Wood,

Rob beings coppicing in the coldest winter months.

Winter has arrived and the wood has changed out of all recognition.

He learns how to create a new woodland super fuel...

-It could get close to over 400 degrees C.

-What?!

..and meets a man who has a unique relationship with his wood.

Wahey! Ha! Hey!

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